Xvkbd to the rescue.....

[Mike Walsh]

Evening, all.

Those of you who are regulars here will recall that over Xmas I was dozy enough to spill half a mug of coffee all over the right-hand side of the old Dell's keyboard..!

I had it all apart, cleaned everything as best I could, but, inevitably perhaps, a couple of keys had suffered. Well, at the time I thought it was only a couple... Trouble is, although I can get another keyboard easily enough, after a very expensive Xmas, wedge is a bit on the tight side for a while, y'know?

ETP helped out with a script using xdotool, which worked nicely:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 088#938088

Then MochiMoppel came up with an easier workaround involving xmodmap:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 126#938126

Which was fine; for only two keys, I made a couple of small scripts which I placed in /root/Startup, and it auto-started at boot...

A couple of days ago, I found another key that didn't work. So I knocked up another little script. And then this evening, I found that a whole bunch of special character keys, several of which I use in my Google a/c password, weren't working either...

I thought to myself, 'This is getting ridiculous. There's a limit to how many of these scripts I can put in /root/Startup...' What I really needed was a virtual keyboard; I recalled mentions of xvkbd around the forum, and thought, 'That's what I need.' So I had a scout around.....

---------------------------------------------------------------

I tracked down this post by muggins, from 2008:-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=37194

I'm probably re-inventing the wheel here (it's something I seem to have a habit of doing..!). Here, xvkbd is started from the terminal, and the libs/deps have to be installed one at a time, separately. All I've done is to take all the components and combined them into a single .pet, along with the addition of a .desktop entry, so that Xvkbd can be started from the menu. For those you who like life easy, you can use JWM Desk Manager in the newer Pups to place Xvkbd into the tray, as a launcher.

It works really well. I've so far tested it in Tahrpup, Precise 5.7.1, and Slacko 5.7.0; that covers a good part of the 'base' Pups. And since it works for me, here it is for anybody else who needs a temporary workaround for 'little accidents..!'

I'm not claiming credit for this, simply trying to make it easier to use, that's all. A huge 'Thank you' is due to muggins for the original compiling/tracking-down of dependencies, etc.

Hope y'all find this useful! Enjoy.


Mike.

[Pelo]

Xvkbd is useful for me when running pupjibaros, to type in Spanish in the "foros" de los devs de South america. Sure they will understand my words even if tilde is missing, but sometimes i want to write them in a perfect Spanish
Improvment of colorizing process done by Argolance, some littlle problems with keyboard size. Devs pls help him !

[Pelo]

xvkbd 3.7 by Medor you can see here. Version 3.1 was enough, and will be enough for me, because it works. Version 3.7 in 64 bits installed, but my Puppies are 32 bits. I am not so much old fashioned, but i know when no to go the step to fall. .
What a difference a new version make ? Important evolution was between 3.3 and 3.5.
3.7 improves korean keyboard

Google traduction est une alternative

[souleau]

For those who like to play around with xvkbd (I am looking at you Pelo), there is one interesting feature.

My xvkbd configuration file is located at /etc/X11/app-defaults, and since I am using a small keyboard, mine is called XVkbd-small. Perhaps your setup is different, and then maybe you use another configuration file, or maybe it is located elsewhere.
Anyhow, at the end of the configuration file, I noticed an unusual entry, which is this:

Code: Select all

!! Use "target" icon in the place of label on the Focus button
!
!xvkbd*Focus.internalWidth: 0
!xvkbd*Focus.bitmap: /usr/include/X11/bitmaps/target

It seems to indicate that you could replace the label of the Focus button with an image.

And this is indeed possible. In fact, it is also possible to replace the label of other buttons with an image.

However, the downside is that the image format required is xbm, which is a very rudimentary format only allowing two colors.
Nevertheless, if some of you feel adventurous to want to dabble with this feature, the Gimp does have an export function for xbm.
What you need though, is the proper label name for a button, which is easy to discover for most of the function keys, but I haven't been able to discover labels for the letter and number keys.

Anyway, for those who might be interested.

[Pelo]

Nice bookmarked on my to do list.. i like it
souleau idea forwarde to our best devs, in France

My goal is to change languages panel to add pl and hu ( Poland and hungary) because Puppy users have their own forum and would be pleased a lot Puppy includes them better than Corea or hebrew

[Pelo]

SFR provides polish (PL) file
Who will be te first to insert it in XVkbd Menu ? Médor, Argolance or a foreign dev ?
Beware, if no feedback, il will do it myself No, it will be too many bugs !

[Pelo]

Gjuhasz provides his hungarian version on forum francophone - click the blue - and further details (in english) how to use it
Tested sucessfully with Puli the Puppy from Hungary